Long ago, this happened.

This is a self-exposing post, because it reveals an experience I really did have when I was eighteen that I virtually never talk about . . . . Also because it's a poem, and even though I am not focused on "writing poetry" at the moment, I find I still gravitate to it when I want intensity and compression and/or I have a short set time and/or I am not trying to "do my project." I feel verrry rusty, but I don't think this is too bad, although it's still an early draft. I suspect I will go back to poetry as a main form eventually, once I get past my current memoir drive. . . .

How this arose: Last night I went to The Cedar Room writer's group in Cedar Rapids. After a discussion period there was enough time left to do a writing prompt. Someone offered a prompt from a book he was working with, but my immediate reaction was refusal and ire: it asked us to imagine and describe a fantastic world (I forget the further details). I can think of nothing I am less interested in; the very thought was like stabbing my eyes with a fork. (Can I just bitch that it is a real problem to have clearly fiction-oriented, to say nothing of fantasy-fiction oriented, prompts in a group that is explicitly billed as all-genre?? This has happened both times I have attended.) But, I did want to write. So I took up something I had been writing in prose the day before and turned it into a poem written against the idea of the prompt. I do actually like it, so I came away from the group feeling pretty good. I kind of wanted to share it, but didn't get a chance, so I thought I'd post it into the ether here.

[poem taken down during submission for publication]

(Note for the literary types: if you detect an echo of William Carlos Williams's "Spring and All" in the description, you would be correct. I have taught that poem so many times and it is deep in my psyche . . . especially as I am drawn to the whole idea of finding spiritual beauty in "waste lands" and have often imagined that if I were to write a book of poems that would be the focus.)